Hey guys,

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the NW Pinball & Gameroom Show. It's a really awesome annual 3-day event at the Seattle Center that is entirely organized and run by game collectors. The focus was originally on Pinball, as the show grew out of a smallish annual gathering of pinball enthusiasts in Oak Harbor, but last year was the first to be a full-on event at the Seattle Center with hundreds of games, tournaments, guest speakers (Steve Wiebe from King of Kong and some very noteworthy pinball designers) and more. It was a huge success and this year's show will be much bigger yet. This year arcade games are being given a huge amount of floor space to balance out the massive number of pinball machines. All the games are collector owned and tend to be in awesome home-use condition, so it totally beats the frustration of trying to play broken games (especially pinball machines) in bars and most arcades. The arcade game focus will mostly be on classic era machines and there is a very impressive lineup of that era of games set to arrive. Check out the most recent list here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pimbVV073RHUMRuCGFt9RAg&hl=en

You can also see a cool promo video for the show here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fVcHs5J1HI

Or look at the show's official website here: http://www.nwpinballshow.com/

It costs $20 per day or $50 for the whole weekend. All the games are on freeplay, of course.

I'm planning on bringing several games: a few classics, a few "candy" style Japanese JAMMA cabinets with obscure PCB favorites of mine (any requests?), and a couple of newer games including a Pop'n Music Fever. I have NO idea how the Pop'n Music will be received by the crowd of mostly vintage game and pinball fans, but I'm guessing it will get a lukewarm reception at best. Since I've finally just gotten my Guitar Freaks and Drummania V3 machines up and running, I am considering bringing those as well. The problem is that they are extremely hard for me to transport -- they are in a basement right now and I have to disassemble them, including removing the whole drum assembly and monitor from Drummania (as well as side speakers and more) just to get them out. It would basically be a day of hard work, not to mention the truck rental and actual transport of the machines to the show. I would love to do it, but not if they're going to sit in a corner unplayed, shunned by a bunch of folks that think they're "Rock Band clones" or whatever.

So my question to you guys is this.. If I DID manage to get the V3 machines to the show, would it influence you to attend? If I get enough positive interest I will strongly consider bringing them, but no promises! Another option is that I could set them up with some vintage mixes for the old-school fans. I could link them up as 5th/6th or as 10th/11th, and if (this is a big "if") I can get my Keyboardmania machine running before the show, I could potentially even set up 6th/5th/3rd and bring SUPER SESSION back to Washington! As an even bigger "if," we could potentially even convince Bill to bring his DM V3 out as well, and we could link the two DMs up for battle mode -- probably the first ever in the US! I'm interested in hearing thoughts and opinions on all of these ideas from local BEMANI fans.

Incidentally, I strongly urge any fan of coin-op games to attend the show regardless of what I bring -- it's an awesome event that barely breaks even at the end of the day, and it is totally driven by pure love for the games.

Let me know what you think!

Bobby